


if we can't save our brothers

by SerenePanic



Series: the elder brother's life all laced in with the other's [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 10:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9650954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerenePanic/pseuds/SerenePanic
Summary: Keith, in the desert.(The quiet does not bother him.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Cardinals" by The Wonder Years.
> 
> Which is like. The absolute most painful Brogane song. But it's great!

The desert is empty.

(Well, it’s not empty, exactly—there are scrub trees, and small animals, and the run-down shack, but it _is_ quiet.)

Quiet is good.

In the evening, when the sun sets, the sky turns rich with gold-toned pinks and purples that shoot across the clouds, designing a new world every night. Standing outside as streaks of light shoot across the sky, highlighting and shadowing different scraps of land every few minutes, Keith can think to himself that he is at peace.

(He’s lying, but he lets himself have this, sometimes.)

In the morning, when the sun rises, he goes outside and sits on the stoop of the shack and sees the dusty blue shadows creep away with orange light, and pretends that with each morning, each sunrise, can lift some of the grief from the shadowed corners of his heart.

(It won’t, and he knows it—his grief is all-consuming and overwhelming; he is a black abyss of sorrow and loss, aching and leaking misery with each heartbeat.)

If he were asked, he would say that he spends his days combing through reports and analyzing data. He would say of course he didn’t believe Iverson; of course the Garrison was covering something up. Of course he knew Shiro would come home. But no one asked, because there was no one to ask. Shiro was gone, and Keith couldn’t go back and face the Shiroganes, knowing their son was gone but Keith was still here.

(What he won’t mention, what he’ll never talk about, are the days when he lays on the ratty couch in that decrepit shack, the days he doesn’t move, the days even getting a drink of water feels like too much effort. The days he knew, if his bones, that his brother was gone and could never come back. The days each breath felt like an effort, a weight on his chest.)

Shiro is gone, and so no one will ask. So Keith will get up in the mornings, on the nights he manages to sleep, and go outside, to let the sun try and reach in that cold, tight place locked up deep away, to chase away that grief and sorrow that he’d never wanted to feel, that he hadn’t known could exist. He’ll go through his motions, and he’ll watch over those strange readings, and he’ll wait until he can remember how to be Keith Kogane, instead of Keith, Shiro’s brother, because Keith-the-brother was warm, and laughed, and didn’t run from the thought of sadness, or instinctually flinch from the prospect of happiness. Keith Kogane didn’t need Shiro, because Keith Kogane didn’t know Shiro. Keith Kogane was alone, and it was okay.

(Keith Kogane had become Keith-the-brother as soon as Shiro turned and smiled and a little eight year old boy, from then on it was a growing experience. To go backwards, though, the boy who had loved his brother had to cut off that love, had to forget what their parents sounded like when they laughed in sheer joy at the antics of the brothers, and had to remember how it felt to be alone.)

Keith has always liked the quiet, no matter who he was. When he was young, quiet meant there was no one to give him bad news. When he was older, it meant Shiro was out and not pulling any pranks on his (very suspecting) little brother. In the Garrison, quiet meant rest. In the desert, quiet means a lack of questions, and no expectation of pretense at being “okay”.

(“Hey, Kogane, you and Shirogane were close, right? I’m so sorry.” “Did you hear what happened to the Kerberos mission?” “I can’t believe Shirogane was such a _blowout_. Once-in-a-lifetime chance to go to Kerberos, and he fucks it up?” “Hey, Kogane, they called you the next Shirogane, right? Man, maybe you should check you don’t end up like him!”)

The desert is lonely, but Keith is lonelier, so the desert is solace.


End file.
